Gutzon Borglum was born in the village of St. Charles, Idaho, on March 25, 1867, after his Danish Mormon emigrant parents, Jens and Ida Borglum, were forced by winter weather to shelter in a one-room cabin while traveling west. The family later moved to Utah and then the Midwest, and as a young man he went to California for art school after deciding early that he wanted to be an artist. Borglum became an American painter and sculptor known internationally for monumental works in stone, bronze, and metal, especially Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, which he designed as a memorial to Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln because he believed they epitomized America's spirit and ideals. His career included many sculptures of civilian and military figures, horses, and Abraham Lincoln. In 1889 he married painter Lisa Putnam in Los Angeles; they traveled in Europe and later divorced. In 1909 he married Mary Montgomery, settled on a farm in Connecticut, and had two children, James Lincoln and Mary Ellis. Artistic talent ran through the family, and although several siblings showed promise, only Gutzon and his brother Solon became world-renowned sculptors. His son Lincoln inherited his father's passion, joined the Mount Rushmore crew, rose to project sculptor and then superintendent, completed the monument several months after Gutzon's death in 1941, and later served as the first superintendent of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial from 1941 to 1944. Work on Mount Rushmore began when Borglum was 60 years old in 1927, continued through much of the Great Depression, and provided about 400 laborers with wages and a chance to take part in a historic undertaking.